Peter Olmstead always wanted to know who his biological parents were. After 20 years of declining an invitation from Grace - the one person who held all the answers he has always been looking for - he finally accepts the offer to face his past.
Relocating back to California where he is scheduled to meet his estranged stepmother Grace, and her secrets, he moves into his rented duplex and comes face to face with a painting called ‘The Reminder’. The moment he lays eyes on it, the artwork instantly begins to trigger the hidden trauma that he has spent his whole life trying to keep buried.
A sudden setback - Grace’s untimely death - left behind only a few clues of pictures and letters. Peter, instead, relies on delving deeper into his psychosis aided primarily by The Reminder. Being prodded on further by the bizarre confluence of seemingly unrelated events, Peter is suddenly at the mercy of rapid fire exposure brought on by patients at the clinic where he works. And then there’s paranormal anomalies occurring within the house he shares with the seemingly schizophrenic old man, Frank.
With a sudden escalation in lucid dreaming, Peter is quickly led along a historical timeline series that begins to expose the true relations and identities of various individuals that now surround him. But before he arrives at the final viewing, that will ultimately relinquish the true origins of his childhood trauma and the identity of his parents, he realizes there is another player in the dreamscape who might not want Peter to know the ultimate truth.
Now exposed in a shared reality a race is on - as Peter finds himself on a fast track of discovery that eventually reveals the crime of passion he witnessed as a child so many years ago.